It's worth listening to one Malcolm Turnbull on the subject.
He's about as accomplished a man as you'll ever encounter. Raised working class by single father. Became:
- successful journalist
- successful lawyer (he beat the British Government in the famous "Spycatcher" case)
- successful investor (made millions in the Internet 1.0 boom)
- successful banker (started boutique merchant bank that he sold to Goldman Sachs, becoming a global director there)
- successful politician (becoming Prime Minister of Oz).
He has no trouble acknowledging the role of good fortune in his life. He says that he was at global directors conference while at Goldman Sachs where the Chairman (I think Blankfein?) gave a rousing speech about to the effect that they were all masters of the universe who deserved their tens of millions of dollars per year as just reward for their hard work and cleverness.
Turnbull claims he took him aside and asked 'are you serious? Don't you think there are millions of smart people who work as hard/ harder for very little money simply because they haven't had the same opportunities?'. He says Blankfein would have none of it. Luck played no role. Anyone not as successful was in some way not as deserving - end of story.
Just Turnbull's version of it, but if true pretty staggering.
From my perspective, it's mostly luck. Not some embodied higher power. Just the vicissitudes of 'the benign indifference of the universe' as Camus put it.
He's about as accomplished a man as you'll ever encounter. Raised working class by single father. Became:
- successful journalist
- successful lawyer (he beat the British Government in the famous "Spycatcher" case)
- successful investor (made millions in the Internet 1.0 boom)
- successful banker (started boutique merchant bank that he sold to Goldman Sachs, becoming a global director there)
- successful politician (becoming Prime Minister of Oz).
He has no trouble acknowledging the role of good fortune in his life. He says that he was at global directors conference while at Goldman Sachs where the Chairman (I think Blankfein?) gave a rousing speech about to the effect that they were all masters of the universe who deserved their tens of millions of dollars per year as just reward for their hard work and cleverness.
Turnbull claims he took him aside and asked 'are you serious? Don't you think there are millions of smart people who work as hard/ harder for very little money simply because they haven't had the same opportunities?'. He says Blankfein would have none of it. Luck played no role. Anyone not as successful was in some way not as deserving - end of story.
Just Turnbull's version of it, but if true pretty staggering.
From my perspective, it's mostly luck. Not some embodied higher power. Just the vicissitudes of 'the benign indifference of the universe' as Camus put it.